Inspired by St Valentine's Day, I decided to take matters into my own hands and nominate my own perfume (fear not normal service will be resumed).

I therefore present you with the short version of the review of

Gres Cabochard

Cabochard is not what she was. Of that there can be no denying.

Today though still beautiful she has the bleak, too bony and hollow-eyed look and feel of a fashion model on the brink of despair.

But catch examples of her in her heyday and a different woman awaits you.

The ultimate in leather clad confidence, she is the chemical queen always on the lookout for a male sidekick. But for all this flint and bone oakmoss structure, the old girl could put on the curvaceous when she needed to: summoning up concupiscent curls of rose, orris root and sage seemingly on demand.

They have largely been withered away now to today’s etiolated example that can call only on watered down jasmine and synthetic if satisfying amber for strength.

Do not dismiss the latest headstrong girl because she’s still tougher than most men in the room. It’s just unfortunate she’s not the force of nature her foremother was.

But we will always have the memories.

Just as we will always have Paris.... and Paris belongs to all of us, men and women alike.

***

For the extended version (with music and film!) just visit The Perfumed Dandy:

From now on on Fridays I will be posting a taster of an older review of the many that I've done to coincide with it appearing on The Perfumed Dandy

Today, we leave behind post war Paris and head beyond the walls of the City of Light, to Versailles and to a

Jean Desprez Bal a Versailles

Bal a Versailles is a dangerous, irresistibly repugnant scent for men and women prepared to dance the dance of death. For all its wondrous beauty nothing can disguise the beating of its monstrous bestial heart.

Amongst its resinous superfluities beyond the brief orange opening there may be flowers and powder a plenty but this is an unapologetically animal aroma with plenty of tooth and claw.

With silage the size of a herd of wildebeest and longevity the length of an elephant's memory this is not a commitment to be taken likely.

Accept its invitation and you are bid welcome to the party of a lifetime, but stay too long and you too may succumb to the guillotine's blade.

But hell is worth the risk!!

***

This is the concise version of the review - a fuller story of the ills of the palace can be found with more words and some pictures at

For a limited time only you can vote both here and there - two votes a day!

Some of you who missed it the first time round might also be interested to know that my review of

Lanvin Arpege

Arpege, even in her reigned in contemporary form is a perennially prickly perfume, quite impossible to get to know at once.

Her behaviour in the opening notes is by most measures quite unseemly and to some noses downright upsetting.

But forbearance and a little understanding see this slightly acidic aledhyde blossom first into a full-bodied floral and then a warm-hearted almost wooded amber scent that never loses her edgy integrity.

Arpege can give the best in class - including the biggest names - a run for their money.
People speak in hushed tones of her family heritage and I would have loved to have met her mother in her vintage days.

Is now available in extended form via The Perfumed Dandy in full technicolor glory...

Re: What female scents are even deadlier on the male?

I can't remember if it's been mentioned in this thread but I got a peel-n-sniff sample of Donna Karan Cashmere Mist in the newspaper ads the other day. I liked it, had kind of a "freshly laundered" vibe that I find appealing. It also struck me as quite wearable by a man. The reviews here at BN didn't quite match my impression so maybe the juice is different than the ad sample.

Re: What female scents are even deadlier on the male?

Actually that's a good question. How do scent cards age? Are the top notes burnt off by the time you get it? Maybe you're only getting the base. I wouldn't be surprised if the subject is explored elsewhere on BN . . .

Re: What female scents are even deadlier on the male?

Hello All

First up some apologies - a browser that shall remain nameless seems to have decided to eat my humble computer for breakfast and I have spent the day mashing together what I can from the remains into a semi-functioning piece of kit.

This is sad as (a) I didn't get a chance to share yesterday's review and

(b) the scent of the day will have been of special interest to some of you.

Let's rectify all of that now...

Caron Narcisse Noir

Narcisse Noir is the smell of a small liberation.

It is the ecstatic unfurling of a muscle too long held in tension, the stretching out of long limbs too long constrained and now allowed at last to be lucid.

It is a perfume of performance not entirely suitable for rehearsals.

Opening with an entire corps de ballet of daffodils and orange blossoms this production has ambition from the start.

These first performers quickly cede centre stage to new stars: a robust if not downright rotund orange with its two partners a somewhat jagged and playful jasmine and a decidedly medicinal tincture of rose.

The narcissi never leave the scene though, and can be called upon at any point to lend force to every heavily choreographed and highly sexed set piece.

Our third act finds us in expansive territory, an imagined landscape of the Russian Steppes as they once were: wild grasses with antelope and feral cats here and there.

It is an animal world, the only trace of men the incense of unseen churches of the old religion.

Against this endless wilderness our drama plays out towards an enigmatic ending that hints at the eternal.

Narcisse Noir is by turns a joyous evocation of youth, an erotic dance of courtship and a meditation on the meaning of the final curtain.

It is classical ballet made scent.

Like all great dance it calls on dancers of every sex.

*************

I was fortunate enough to sample the current extrait and an older eau de toilette formulation in a white spotted box and the traditional Caron flacon.

However, though lighter I find the current toilette to be a perfectly sensuous scent, much derided for no good reason.

Rumours abound that the eau de toilette is to be entirely discontinued if this has not indeed already happened.

The full version can be found at The Perfumed Dandy - just click below to be transported to the ballet!

Meanwhile, today I have been wearing Estee Lauder Knowing! Hurrah I hear some shout....

Okay so after this exceptional general post, things will be back to normal from tomorrow - I hope!

- - - Updated - - -

Well, after another breakdown in communications (it was a search engine that was eating my IT not a broadband problem...) it's past 0100 hours here in London and the lines have finally closed. Voting is over!!

Today, Thursday 28th February, I'll be wearing:

Histoires de Parfums 1889 Moulin Rouge

Yes , that might be a surprise but it's another one of the flukes of the voting system!

What will I wear Friday 1st March (St David's Day)?

Choose from the following 10:

Gucci Gucci by Gucci

Pierre Balmain Jolie Madame

Serge Lutens Tubereuse Criminelle

Estée Lauder Very Estee

Stella McCartney Stella

Bottega Veneta Bottega Veneta

Guerlain Sous le Vent

Lancome Tresor

Jessica Simpson Fancy Nights

Or the newcomer...

Sarah Jessica Parker Lovely

Remember all previous votes count towards a fragrance's running total and every participant gets a new vote every day!

You also get an additional vote if you visit The Perfumed Dandy

http://theperfumeddandy.com

The IT has put paid to a new review for now, but one is on it's way very soon.... In the meantime. if you haven't seen it yet my review of

Caron Narcisse Noir

Is now up on the database in concise form and in full at The Perfumed Dandy too. Just click below to find it.

Continuing our long week of classic French perfume, the one that was out of the blocks (arguably) first...

Guerlain Jicky

Jicky is the perfume of the point in history at which all things changed.

It is the step forward in scent that could never be untaken – a thrusting out in front of the speeding clamour of fate.

From here on in nothing could ever be the same again.

From here on in perfume had the option of a beginning, a middle and an end.

Jicky’s beginning is now as familiar to us as the subtle hiss of the atomiser’s spray, both sharply citrus and soothingly aromatic in almost equal measure.

In its middle it becomes more animal than botanical it gains horses’ leather and something a lot like civet that goes unlisted. But these are not wild animals and the dark resins and perfumes of grooming and petting are in place too. And if some of those polishes have a slight paraffin base? Then so much the better.

The dry down has become leitmotif too, it is vanilla and earth and wood and a certain sweetness that seems made for fragrance.

To wear Jicky is to wear a piece of history.

The first modern perfume is no longer a modern perfume.

Long may this part of the past persist in our present.

*************

On the question of sex?

Jicky is the olfactory Orlando.

*************

As ever a concise review, based in this case on the present formulation of the parfum extrait. The full review is at The Perfumed Dandy, just click below to be transported there...

Re: What female scents are even deadlier on the male?

I hope I shan't let anything out of the bag here, but I feel as though I am more inclined to Estee Lauder than most - for example Cinnabar to my nose is infinitely preferable to even pre-reformulation Opium and Azuree and Private Collection are two of the greatest perfumes ever to be produced. Yet people seem to think Lauder just a tiny way up the ladder from Coty for some reason. It;s a strange world...

Assiduosity is The Perfumed Dandy, get to know him better at http://theperfumeddandy.com/

Re: What female scents are even deadlier on the male?

Originally Posted by Assiduosity

I hope I shan't let anything out of the bag here, but I feel as though I am more inclined to Estee Lauder than most - for example Cinnabar to my nose is infinitely preferable to even pre-reformulation Opium and Azuree and Private Collection are two of the greatest perfumes ever to be produced. Yet people seem to think Lauder just a tiny way up the ladder from Coty for some reason. It;s a strange world...

Re: What female scents are even deadlier on the male?

Originally Posted by Assiduosity

I hope I shan't let anything out of the bag here, but I feel as though I am more inclined to Estee Lauder than most - for example Cinnabar to my nose is infinitely preferable to even pre-reformulation Opium and Azuree and Private Collection are two of the greatest perfumes ever to be produced. Yet people seem to think Lauder just a tiny way up the ladder from Coty for some reason. It;s a strange world...

It dances along the line between near propriety and beyond the pale and ends up firmly planting its big feet on the wrong side of the tracks.

After an early and brief spring of orange blossom and a slightly boozy, on the turn peach, the foliage and fruits give way quickly to the main part of the tree and the backbone of the perfume, the trunk.

This is a fragrance that never fails to get and give good wood.

But we’re not in a forest here, this is the whirling saw dust sand storm of a timber mill, the sculptor’s studio, the joiner’s yard or the dustbin at the front of class where 20 children are simultaneously sharpening pencils over the stones of play time plums.

This is raw wood being cut while the sap is still high.

And the softness in the background, the vanilla, and spices and resins and musk?

They all serve to prove how hard and soaringly high the wood is.

How sad then that all effort is expended so quickly on creating such effect that things must come to so untimely an end...

*************

For a man or woman – as long as you’re a lumberjack, then you’re all right.

This is the concise review, for the full story visit The Perfumed Dandy, you can click on the link below:

Re: What female scents are even deadlier on the male?

Originally Posted by Assiduosity

I have a feeling about Floris, Creed and Grossmith that these 'Old English' houses are very blurred when it comes to the gender of their scents - Cefiro is not one I'm familiar with so will be happy to give it a test[/COLOR]

Aaah. Opium. This is one I've thought about repeatedly mysefl, but never dared to try. I've been surprised that you're the first to through its hat into the ring, but I'm more than happy to consider it...

I got a sampler pack form Floris and had no idea Cefiro was for women. I loved it.
And I think you mean keys in the bowl when it comes to Opium, no? :-)

A review I feel leaves me out on a limb from the general consensus on this fragrance, I guess greens make me blue (in a good way)...

Dior Dioressence

TS Eliot was wrong you know, it’s not always April that is the cruelest month, it is whichever season that brings sorrow with it.

Dioressence is a terribly sad smell, the smell, in fact, of sorrow.

In the vintage formulation a vertical door of heavy as lead oakmoss serves as an opening.

Aldehydes, unspecified green notes and a slight citrus seek to sanitise and lighten this dark accord but do nothing to soothe its awesome presence.

The interior of the fragrance remains determined by this entrance too, and whilst there are floral elements within: geranium most noticeably, rose, carnation and some structural jasmine, the whole effect remains resolutely patchouli , grassy green and solemn.

The spices, resins and hint of musk that seem to come to the fore for a moment in dry down fade to pianissimo much sooner than the principal notes are done with their song.

The overall effect is magisterial and silencingly beautiful.

Others of course will hear the spring chorus singing nature’s melody in the meadows by the way and are in their way are quite right too.

Dioressence is a substantial enough work to allow many readings.

*************

Sorrow does not discriminate between men and women and nor does the springtime, then why should this scent?

This is the concise version of the review, the extended version appears on The Perfumed Dandy, click below to see it...

One that has been lurking in the vaults for a good while today... I tried to like it, but, well...

Elizabeth Arden Green Tea

Elizabeth Arden’s Green Tea is an unpleasantly sickly absence of taste where a good scent should be.

It manages to coordinate a collection of apparently innocuous notes into something cyclically banal and mentholatedly nauseating.

Opening with a big metallic straight-from-the-tin note of readymade and heavily sugared ice tea with something distinctly alcoholic, intended perhaps to lend a touch of racy chic, only a zest of lemon and undefined citrus are all too brief relief.

The tea persists well into an elongated heart that is the strangest part of the whole affair, for this is where the mint note, a chewing gum confection of an aroma with an anti halitosis fennel, appears, then disappears and then reappears almost literally ad nauseum.

This compositional quirk, which might be interesting or exciting were the note beautiful or even bearable is rendered irritating to the extreme by the plastic, mouthwash like quality of the odour.

Then yet another transformation, as in late dry down the mint and acid elements dissipate and a rather salty, perhaps too salty, amber appears with a distinct artificial oakmoss structure underlining it.

Any sense of hope is misplaced for this oakmoss has a bitter unpleasant spice and lacks any power.

Indeed, the best thing that can be said about this Green Tea is that, the Wrigley’s moments apart, it stays relatively close to the skin throughout and is almost instantly forgettable.

Notwithstanding this lapse in silage, the longevity for something that comes across as a near tea cologne at the opening is reasonable.

For once this staying power is actually a negative, for this is a scent that is by turns offensively inoffensive and firmly rooted in the world of oral hygiene.

Eventually one is left wishing that like a gate crashing guest a summer picnic it would just go away.

*************

Nothing about Green Tea other than its central sweetness would ever have denoted gender and now that men are as sugary toothed in their fragrant tastes as women this is an odour for everyone and no one.

This is the concise review, for an extended version, have a look at The Perfumed Dandy accessible at the link below...

Bandit is the scent of Left Bank larcenists who steal sometimes by stealth, on occasion by sleight of hand but always with an enormous sense of style.

Its leather note is, quite rightly, a legendary knockout punch given power and lift by a physical architecture of aldehydes and oakmoss.

However, there is some playfulness here too, beyond the freshly squeezed citrus and steely galbanum of the opening a teasing hint of florals sits behind the great fist at the heart of the fragrance.

The dry down too is a pleasing affair as the muscular perfume relaxes slightly but loses nothing of its toned character. Here the smoky notes of vetiver and myrhh come together in an accord resembling rolling tobacco.

Bandit may not have the most glamorous of names, but this is the highest end heister you’re ever likely to come across.

This is pilfering made perfection.

*************

A fragrance that Bonnie and Clyde can enjoy together forever.

As ever, this is the concise review, the long version is over at The Perfumed Dandy. You merely click on the link below and you will be taken there...

Guerlain Encens Mythique D'Orient
I say wonderful in all modesty as it was written by my splendid guest writer The Collector, I'd encourage you to have a look at these wide words. A click once more is all that's needed...

This house, so often sneered at continues to impress, today in the shape of...

Estée Lauder Knowing

Knowing by Estee Lauder is a single minded scent.

It has a clear and determined idea of where it wants to be and it’s damn well going to get there.

Opening with a minor avalanche of sparkling insecticide aldehydes, overflowing oakmosses are next, beating out a baseline with dark patchouli that will last the entire tune through.

The melody itself is carried from the off by a charming, slightly dry, somewhat spicy rose that is filled out in the heart by a string section of white flowers with some support from attendant aromatics.

The long dry down, so typical of this house, sees a smoky vetiver take up the letitmotif and the animalics, that have been harmonising so prominently play a subtle solo or two.

And here’s the thing, to the wearer, with the close to the skin rose note forever at hand, the whole symphony makes sense, once it’s modern take on classic theme is understood.

But to unschooled noses a little further away a misconception might form that this is a brittle, bitter and little too forthright fragrance.

It is nothing of the sort.

Knowing is a triumph of structure and strength: a modern rose with impeccable, if pruned back, floral chypre credentials.

*************

Some scents one has a sense a man could wear in this case one just knows he could.

This is a concise version of the review, the full text can be found over at The Perfumed Dandy.

Re: What female scents are even deadlier on the male?

Nice appreciation of Diorissimo, Assid! lt is certainly not as innocent as many might think.

l vote for Beyond Love next.

Thank you Teardrop.

The vote is registered in the ledger.

- - - Updated - - -

Originally Posted by mlsweeney

Did you skip Sensuous by Estee Lauder?

No Sensuous won - it's just in the pipeline of scents waiting to have their day in the sun!! Along with a couple of other oldies...

- - - Updated - - -

Gosh, I am going on rather... here's an updated version of the review of

Chanel Coco

Coco by Chanel is the quintessential smell of the decade of apparent plenty.

More than a dozen years after the death of Gabrielle and a decade after the launch of Cristalle, it was time to ring the changes at Chanel: to herald the dawn of a brave new world.

The world of cool as ice creations such as No19 was long gone, their sparse feminism to be replaced with an enormous outpouring of fin de siecle flouncing femininity.

No perfume encapsulates these gestural sexual politics better than Coco.

So these new attitudes divided, so does the perfume.

Some encounter classic rose and sandalwood. Others an almost fruity almost sweet vanilla that betrays much of what was to follow within a decade. Another house holds that this is a grand floral, while others still cry animalic wood.

In truth this apparent confusion belies the truth: Coco is complex.

It is a perfume that sought to be everything to every man and woman, just as it could be argued women everywhere found themselves having to do just that at just the same time.

And yet, and yet, the overall effect is not of confusion but of an overabundance of confidence and an unquiet coherence that brings contentment to all who encounter it.

This scent maybe identity crisis underneath, but on the surface it's a mini-series superstar.

Oh yes and my goodness did it, for better or for worse, change the game.

The cry went up:

'Madame Chanel is most definitely dead. Long live Coco.'

*************

At the time it would have seemed inconceivable, but today, can a man wear Coco?

Hell why not if he's got the hotel room to go with it!

This is the concise version. Full technicolor, bells and whistles over at The Perfumed Dandy.

Re: What female scents are even deadlier on the male?

I must thank The Perfumed Dandy for such an eloquently written perspective on 2 of my favorite fragrances on women - Chanel Coco and Dior Diorissimo. Coincidentally the former was one of the presents to my then fiancee at our engagement while the latter was part of my gift set to her at our wedding. Reading your back-to-back reviews of these amazing fragrances certainly made my day.

Re: What female scents are even deadlier on the male?

It's Monday morning here in London. The lines are closed and voting is over.

Today, the 18th of March, I hope (see below) to be wearing...

Robert Piguet Futur

What will I wear Tuesday 19th March?

Choose from the following 10:

Gucci Gucci by Gucci

Estée Lauder Very Estee

Jessica Simpson Fancy Nights

Diptyque Do Son

Amouage Interlude Woman

By Kilian Beyond Love

Guerlain Apres l'Ondee

Elizabeth Taylor White Diamonds

Juliette Has A Gun Calamity J.

Or the newcomer...

Diptyque L'Ombre Dans L'Eau

Remember all previous votes count towards a fragrance's running total and every participant gets a new vote every day!

By the time you read this, I will be having some (fairly) minor oral surgery, I'm hoping it doesn't knock me out too badly, but if it does, please be patient and I will return to harvest votes and go in search of new fragrant fancies to try!

In the meantime... After my not-so-nice encounter with

Elizabeth Arden Green Tea

I've been on the hunt for a tea scent I actually get along with... the results are on The Perfumed Dandy

I must thank The Perfumed Dandy for such an eloquently written perspective on 2 of my favorite fragrances on women - Chanel Coco and Dior Diorissimo. Coincidentally the former was one of the presents to my then fiancee at our engagement while the latter was part of my gift set to her at our wedding. Reading your back-to-back reviews of these amazing fragrances certainly made my day.

For the next round, I vote for By Kilian Beyond Love.

Why thank you Diamond Flame, kind words from such a knowledgeable perfumed gentleman as yourself means a lot.

I'm just pleased that people are finding the reviews at least diverting!

Assiduosity is The Perfumed Dandy, get to know him better at http://theperfumeddandy.com/